Two downtown Kansas City property owners filed a lawsuit Thursday to invalidate the financing mechanisms for the city’s $100 million streetcar plan.

The suit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, claims that the 1-cent sales tax and special property assessments for the Kansas City Downtown Streetcar Transportation Development District are unconstitutional.

Burke is president of Kansas City Air Filter at 415 Grand Blvd. and owns that property through KCAF Investors LLC.

Rumaner owns Grinders Pizza and Grinders West at 415 E. 18th St. and 417 E. 18th St. through Logic II LLC and Logic III LLC.

They claim that stacking the streetcar district on top of the 1200 Main/South Loop TDD formed in 2006 for the Kansas City Power & Light District would exceed the statutory limit of a 1 percent tax in a TDD.

The streetcar tax takes effect April 1.

The suit also challenges the mail-in election that formed the district because only voters who lived within its boundaries could participate.

“It’s simply unfair and un-American that I did not get a say in what happens in my own city, especially when it is a project of this magnitude and I’m the one stuck paying the bill,” Burke said in a written statement.

Rumaner, a former member of the Kansas City Tax Increment Financing Commission, said the taxes could “dampen the organic resurgence that Downtown and the Crossroads have already experienced.”

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